Toronto, Canada

We drove away from the falls mid-day, headed toward the Toronto area, around Lake Erie. We had booked our hotel online, and the plan was for us to rest there that night before Franz met up with a long time client of ours the next day. We have worked with Joe in Canada for 7 or 8 years, procurring cars for his client to armor-plate and send to the Middle East. However, we had never met Joe face-to-face. This trip was a great excuse.

Well, Franz called Joe on our way toward Toronto so that they could finalize the next day's plans. "Oh, don't stay there!" said Joe. "Trust me, you won't like that part of town." He recommended a different suburb for us to try. So, while we were headed that direction, Franz turned on the hot spot on his mobile phone, and I pulled out my iPad and synced up to it. We looked up hotels in the newly named suburb, found the one that would work for us, and gave them a call. Then, we plugged the hotel address into our GPS, and just followed the directions. We didn't even have a map at this point!

Just a little glimpse of our life on the road. What you don't see is Jackson tied down in the stroller, his diaper bag backpack on my back, the water bottles stowed beneath, and his blanket balanced on top.

That night, we decided to initiate Jackson into one of life's small pleasures: Oreos. We broke out a pack of America's favorite cookie and handed one over to the little guy with great anticipation. We were not disappointed in the least. After chewing thoughtully on his first bite or so, he shoved the rest of the cookie in and spoke through the mouthfulls, "mah, mah," one of his earliest-adopted words meaning "more."

Here is the post-Oreo face. What's your take?

The next morning, we received a late check-out and I had a leisurely pace with the kids. Franz set out to meet with Joe and take a tour of his client's massive local armor-plating facility.

The plan was that he would return about 1:30 and we would leave. Jackson took a nice nap. The girls had a swim. It was lovely. About 11:00 I got a call from Franz. "I'm 15-20 minutes out. We're coming to pick you guys up for lunch. We'll have to check out then so have everything ready."

My brain swirling, as I contemplated what everyone would look like when meeting a client of Franz's - the first problem to solve. Secondly, was the still-occupied pack and play, and all the luggage and clothing, the coolers needing ice, the water bottles and things in the fridge, the general disarray of the room. I started mentally prioritizing while barking orders to the girls, who were thankfully quick to jump into the fray. Sure enough, when Franz showed up, we were nearly done creating order from the chaos, and everyone looked decent.

Apparently, Joe was waiting downstairs for us, so we loaded up a luggage cart (see the photo above) and went down to check out. There was some hang-up with the paperwork that I was not privy to, as I was in the parking lot juggling the kids and talking to Joe, who was leaning out his car window. Finally, all was in order, and we loaded up our pack mule caravan, I mean car, and followed Joe to the restaurant he had selected.

The restaurant was a nice lunch spot, and I ordered a couple of smallish gourmet pizzas for the kids and I to split. We had three two-top tables pushed together at the back of the restaurant. The girls sat across from each other at one end, Franz and I sat across from each other in the middle, and Joe sat next to Franz, with Jackson across from him and next to me. Make any sense? Well, it's important. Otherwise I wouldn't mention it.

Jackson, of course, decided that it wouldn't be his day for patience. God bless him, he is a Forman boy, after all. Being the prepared mother that I am (wink wink), I began pulling the circus tricks out of the diaper bag. Snacks. Sure, one, maybe two. Bored again. A small car perhaps? For once, not interested. But first he makes it sail across the floor out into the aisle to his left. Bored again; aggressively bored. How about a book? Hmm. He looks interested. Maybe. Then, he shoves the book as hard has he can across the table and directly into the 3/4 full bottle of beer in front of Joe, which upsets directly into Joe's lap just as he is telling Franz that he will be driving directly from our lunch to a meeting. Perfect!! Just perfect. Mortified. Just mortified.

The only interesting thing to Jackson during the rest of the interminably long lunch (including the food), was the skin on the arms of our waitress. Seriously. He couldn't keep his hands off her arms, rubbing them every time she came near. It was the weirdest thing I've ever seen. He's never done that before or since. She was in her 50s and had never had children, but was thankfully sweet to Jackson about the whole thing. I couldn't wait to leave.